Fifi Turin

Joséphine Cavallini, known as Fifi Turin (7 April 1913 – 5 August 1944), was a textile worker, trade union activist, communist and anti-fascist activist born in Marseille. She was captured and executed by German occupation forces for her resistance work against them during World War II.

Biography Born in 1913 into a working-class family in Marseille, Fifi Turin worked in the spinning mills from the age of thirteen at the SA des Filatures et Tissages de Marseille, located at 21 boulevard des Vignes (now named Boulevard Fifi-Turin) in the Capelette district. She was the wife of fellow activist Laurent Turin. but despite that, Turin was active against the German Occupation of France. Placed under house arrest in Tarascon in November 1940 by the pro-German French government, the Vichy regime, she managed to escape. Condemned to a life in hiding, she went to Lyon, France, where she joined the French Resistance as a liaison agent in the ranks of the Francs-Tireurs et Partisans (FTP). There she used the pseudonyms "Germaine," "Hélène" and "Denise." In June 1943, she was assigned to the radio service of the clandestine French Communist Party.

Fifi Turin's ashes were eventually returned to Marseille and were buried in the city's Saint-Pierre cemetery. The event became a well-attended ceremony organized by the city's Communist Party and trade union authorities.

A street in the tenth arrondissement of Marseille, Boulevard Fifi-Turin, bears her name. A plaque in her memory was placed at the beginning of the boulevard and another on the house where she lived at 69, rue des Vignes (now rue Del-Bello). Her name also appears on the memorial to the Resistance fighters of the Bouches-du-Rhône department in the military section of the Saint-Pierre cemetery in Marseille.